Rio Blog: end of July, 2008

Yes, I’m a few weeks late, but some of you have been asking me to finish the story of this trip to my beloved Rio. And I’m up here teaching in Maine and have seen practically none of you since my return anyway, so here goes. This part of my story frequently involves my friends Isabel & Dagmar, who you may remember arrived in Rio at the end of my last log. We had a lot of fun, but they did have some unfortunate misadventures as well at the end of their stay that delayed their departure. To preserve their privacy I will skip over details of the situation. And before I begin I want y’all to know that they did finally get home to Boston safe and sound, and Dagmar is on the mend.

When I left you last time I was standing in the sun on a Sunday outside the Bar do Mineiro in Santa Teresa waiting for what would turn out to be a wonderful feijoada w/ Romulo & Mariana & another friend. The following day featured a mandolin highlight of the trip— a CD release concert by the wondrous bandolimist Hamilton de Hollande @ Modern Sound, a CD store that turns bar/club in the evenings. (Note: his name is pronounced ah-MIL-tone gee oh-LAHN-ja. I especially put this in for my brother Ian who hasn’t really forgiven me for the fact that I am, phonetically-speaking, playing HO-dahs in HEE-oo with HO-moh-loh, rather than roda in Rio with Romulo…but I digress…).

Isabel has put in a reservation for us earlier in the day, and I intend to arrive about a half hour ahead of time to save us good seats, as I’ve never seen Hamilton in a small club before. But as I am practicing, so as not to feel too bad while witnessing the bando-boy’s awesomeness, I hear TaxiPaulo’s beep, so I wave out the window, grab my stuff and run down the 4 flights to the street. He’s just in the neighborhood & stopping by to say hi and give me some butterfly earrings he has got for me. They are only to be worn one at a time, but are still so beyond-cute that I have to just smile at his sweetness. I will be seeing/meeting fellow musicians at this concert & no one would take me seriously wearing an earring like that, so I hook one onto the neck of my T-shirt with thanks and a smile.

TP is going to Ipanema so he offers to drop me at the club & we have time for a juice & sanduiche @ BigBi first, & I’m still way early. The door-woman insists that Isabel’s reservation doesn’t gain us access to the table area, so I grab us central stools in the outskirts & settle in to wait. & before Is&D get there, Marcus & Michel— the teens from my band— arrive with Michel’s gfriend & I can’t have them sitting at the back, so we wedge some more stools in. The regular bandolimist from the Tuesday roda arrives & I meet his wife & co-workers & he sits down across the aisle. Is&D arrive & we are really squashed in, but some seats open up in front of us that I scoot the boys toward, and just before Hamilton comes on the door-lady comes by & asks if Is, D & I would like to move up to one side of a table in the front, so we get chairs w/ backs after all. & a great view of Hamilton.

He’s playing w/ bass, guitar & drums/percussion & is as amazing as predicted. I take a couple of films of him playing & some blurry pics, the best of which is attached. My pics of Is&D are too dark, because I don’t want to use flash in the faces of the rest of the audience, many of whom are stellar musicians in their own right. The show is more bebop than choro and more rock than anything else. Hamilton is a phenom, and his playing is jaw-droppingly impressive. But I don’t buy the CD because the music doesn’t really resonate w/ me, although we have a lot of fun watching, eating snacks, and explaining the music to our Rio tablemates who have no idea what they will be seeing. Afterwards I see a kid from my bandolim class & meet his older brother & TP arrives, since I asked him to pick me up. Normally I would have just grabbed a cab outside the club, but it’s nice to have a friend to drive me home. Is&D are staying at a hotel around the corner so they chat w/ TP a bit & leave to walk home.

Tuesday I’m meeting Paulo Sa @ the Villa Lobos School so we can record my choro, Siga em Frente (Go Straight Ahead), in the version we played at our concert at the Conservatory a couple of weeks ago, because that recording was too distant and I haven’t ever got a good recording of that piece yet. (sentence long enough for ya?) Unfortunately I have replaced the batteries in my recorder with some from the spent pile by mistake so it’s dead, but we have fun playing anyway and will record it same time next week when we meet to work on our book project. He’s on a tight schedule today because he just got a couple of unexpected gigs & has rehearsals, but we have a cafezinho before parting at Carioca Station.

Then it’s home for a quick turn-around and back on public trans to go to Luiz’ roda. It’s a good one, and Valle, the 7-chord player, wants to play “Evocacao” w/ me again, so we do and enjoy it, even though it’s loud in the bar. I’m pleased he asked, and that this is becoming one of the songs I’m known for, along w/ Santa Morena & Diabinho Maluco. I feel really at home @ this roda now. The waiter smiles & greets me when I arrive, and asks if I want a capirinha soon after we start playing. The regulars know me & there are always some of the Rio ladies there who grab my arm afterwards to ask or tell me things, and they’re always surprised when my accent announces that I am from somewhere else. It pleases me that my playing doesn’t. Romulo always plays there, and Ana, and Luiz, and usually Casio, although he is missing tonight, and Alfredo on pandeiro. It’s a regular part of my week now.

Wednesday is my lesson w/ Joel, and Isabel is going, to meet him & hang out. Of course I know going into it that Joel will spend most of the time lecturing her on his theory of choro, but I’m in a mood to share. She is supposed to arrive for lunch, but doesn’t and I sit on the wall across from the Internet cafe scanning every bus that arrives. It turns out that she called but my phone is not receiving calls— a service provider problem— and she is delayed & then gets off the bus too soon, and when she does arrive it’s too late to eat so TP pulls in at a corner shop & we grab some bad sanduiche & guarana (Brazilian soda, not an exotic lizard or plant) on the way. The lesson is fun— Joel is glad to have a new audience for his stories, and when TP comes back to pick us up we take lots of pics. Afterwards we get something good to eat & walk to Praia Vermelha in hopes of seeing the music session that everyone has told me happens there, and has been confirmed by Isabel’s guidebook & the man in the news stand. But they are all wrong, so we sit on the wall & talk until she catches a bus for home. We plan to meet Saturday to go to the nordest fair.

Thursday is the last day before we master the Agua CD, and Romulo calls to say that Pablo is in melt-down and hasn’t finished the mixes yet and is freaking out. So R is going to drive up to Mage after work, and a roda he has been asked to sub for, to help him finish. He’ll arrive there about 10:30 PM, when Pablo will get home from work, & they’ll be up all night if necessary & then he’ll drive back to Rio with the final mixes & go to work himself. I offer to come along to keep him awake, but he says he’ll be fine. It’s a lovely day & Is&D are off seeing some sights so I go to the beach at Ipanema & lie in the glorious sun for a couple of hours, and then hang out w/ Miriam & Sergio in the evening.

Friday morning R calls. He has to drop the CD of the mixes (finished— yea!!) off w/ Marcelo so they can be loaded up when we arrive, and then he wants to meet me downtown to hang out, because he can’t sleep, but is too wiped out to work, so we may as well do a couple of the things we’d been planning, like go to an interesting bookstore he has told me about & I can show him where I get the early choro scores at the National library. So I hop on the bus to the metro. The boy is punchdrunk tired, we can hardly find each other at the metro station his directions are so uncharacteristically bad. & R says that Pablo is so burnt he isn’t even coming in to the mastering session tonight, so it’ll be up to me to communicate w/ the Marcelos & get our CD sound. I buy R&Mariana a guidebook to Paris in the bookstore— they are going to Europe for the first time in September, but the library has just closed when we get there. So we head to my place to burn a CD of pics & music R wants & he drowses in my chair listening to my favorite CD of the Brahms Intermezzos. Then we grab some dinner & head to the studio.

A 2nd Marcelo has joined #1: he’s the mastering guy. At first he tries to adjust things to match our CD sound to the CD that R has brought of our “ideal” sound. But when he asks me which track I like best— mastered or unmastered— and I make the wrong choice, he says it’s not going to work. The “best” CD has no mandolin, no electric guitar, and the only instrument R really wanted to match is the pandeiro. It’s a much lighter CD too, so trying to match it we are losing our sound. I like Marcelo2— he seems smart and reacts well to suggestions, and seems to understand even my English. So we just set out to make our own sound. This isn’t new to me, as I have had to do that at the start of many of my own CDs. We arrive at a good sound for the first track & start the others there, tweaking them a bit for instrumentation. In our 4 hours we manage to do half of the CD. Home @ 1:30 AM— a night well spent.

Saturday we’ll finish mastering @ 4:00, but before that TP is driving Is&D and me to the all-week-end, every-weekend fair of northeast Brazilian food/culture/music in a northern suburb of Rio. We all meet @ Praia Vermelha @ noon for the drive up. When we get to the fair TP checks his watch & says he can stay for a couple of hours with us & have some “fun” (which, although English, is pronounced “FOO-nee”) so we all go in. Is loves the accordion-based bands— she & TP dance & then she & I do. It’s a cool place to walk around, and eat, and buy crafts and take pictures, and Is&D are having a blast. We eat a typical nordest meal, that involves a plate of major meat piled on vegetables. TP leaves @ 2:30, promising to meet me at the studio— R has asked him to please come & help us w/ his recording-engineer ears.

I leave Is&D still having fun to catch a cab w/ a v.dumb driver @ 3:00. He takes a v.circuitous & time-consuming route to the studio, maybe because he doesn’t know Sta Teresa, or maybe because he is a cheat, but I end up arriving late, and R calls worried. Pablo is caught in traffic so we go ahead w/out him. He arrives an hour later looking better than expected, and TP comes in a few minutes after that. I’ve still got my camera from the fair, & TP says I have to film the “making of” video. So I get Pablo to talk and switch around as everyone joins in. Funny. And we finish mastering and I’m really happy to see how happy Pablo & R are with the result, as they have worked so hard on this project. R pulls up the draft of the cover on Marcelo’s computer for everyone to see and we adjust some text. Tomorrow we’ll finish the cover too, with Bernard after the Sao Salvador roda.

Sunday is my last roda @ Sao Salvador, as I’m going to Petropolis next Sunday, and will be back in La Prov the one after that. Isabel & Dagmar come & Is plays for awhile w/ my mandolin while I shoot pics of her first Rio roda (I guess all on her camera as I can’t find them to attach one). It’s Ishmael the blind drummer’s birthday and his aunt has brought 2 big cakes. (yes, the cake continues…) They both have the sheet music for Benguele printed on the frosting somehow. One is delicious chocolate, and the other, which is called a “bolo (cake) Americano,” is a giant 5-layer tuna salad sandwich! It’s pointless to try to protest that we Americans do not have tuna salad cake… (reminds me of my amusement finding  packets of the mix for “Rhode Island” sauce in a grocery store in Sweden.)

I buy my last “berries caipirinha” from the portable bar/CD shop & we go off to lunch w/ R&M, Bernard & a bunch of friends, including Casio. Casio apologizes for being late and missing most of my last roda, but I make him promise to come to Luiz’ on Tuesday. Dagmar is feeling under the weather so she goes home instead, & Is leaves after lunch. I’m planning to meet her & Dagmar to go club-hopping in Lapa on Monday night, as they are going back to the US on Wednesday.  After lunch the Agua crew goes to Bernard’s to finish the last changes and additions to the CD text. And then there it is, on a CD in my hand. And later that night, far from being exhausted, my brain hands me the key to organizing the choro book Paulo Sa & I are planning. Amazing how clarity can suddenly appear with no warning and when least expected. If you’d like a preview of the Agua CD you can see the cover & hear a couple of tunes here: <http://www.myspace.com/aguanofeijao>

Monday I meet Paulo “no centro” & we successfully record Siga & finish fleshing out the book. He loves my brain-storm ideas & adds some things to the table of contents and we assign ourselves various jobs to do before I see him in the US at the end of September, when we will hopefully start putting the pieces in place. On my way home I get a call from Isabel that Dagmar has suddenly become really sick and they’ve been to a doctor & have some medicine but won’t be going out tonight. So I’ll call in the morning to see what they want to do for their last day. When I arrive back @ Miriam’s, her son Sergio is packing to leave to go to Rio Grande Sul, way in the south of Brazil, where he has found a girlfriend and is cheerily planning a new life. We toast him w/ lemon liquor, all we have in the house, and watch/help him pack up to leave early.

Tuesday morning early I get a call from Is, who is w/ Dagmar in the emergency room. I go right over to the hospital, in Botofogo, to be with them. It’s all kind of confusing and scary, but the new doctor, recommended by the Consulate, seems very good. They eventually decide to admit her and say she will not be able to fly for a few days so they will have to reschedule their flight. I call R to ask him to apologize to Luiz, and miss the roda, and stay late. Is stays at the hospital all night, and actually will until they leave to go home.  Somewhere around midnight, after arriving home, I get a call from Casio— I had forgotten that I had especially asked him to be at the roda so we could play together. So I give my apologies and say I will be there next Tuesday, my last in Rio for this trip.

Wednesday morning, when I call, things seem to be going better at the hospital, so I will go to my lesson w/ Joel as planned, and call TP to ask him to pick me up @ the hospital instead of in Urca. When he finds out why, his response is— why didn’t you call me sooner! And he is already at the hospital to visit when I arrive. The Brazilians in this soon-to-be hospital saga will be the amazing bright spot. The man from their hotel who puts on a suit and comes to visit; the doctor who calls Blue Cross in the US several times to explain the situation so the bills will be covered; the nurses who are in the room seconds after a buzzer is pushed, and share stories of their lives and bring CDs of their favorite music as parting gifts for Is&D; the people on the phone at the Consulate and the airline who say they are all so happy when they hear D has improved. But we’re not there yet. We are now @ Joel’s where he spends hours on improving my ornaments, the every nuance of glides and trills, and then takes out a huge stack of manuscript copies that we play through & make a pile of the best ones for me to copy. Some of these manuscripts have “copied from a manuscript of Jacob” written at the bottom, or “written for Isaias & copied from the manuscript in 1979”. Pretty heady stuff for a gringa! I am beat but happy when I arrive home.

When I call the hospital Thursday there are more worries and more tests, so I am there all day to lend support and help Is figure out all the Portugese. But Thursday overnight things improve, and Friday morning when I call there is relief in Isabel’s voice. They can’t leave Saturday, but Monday for sure. I am still at the hospital most of the day, but go to hear Paulo Sa play bandolim w/ an orchestra in the evening @ Cecilia Mirelles Hall, and inadvertently discover the cheapest drinking in town. I catch a cab from the hospital & arrive at the hall about an hour ahead of time as I don’t have a ticket. I remember that they have discount tickets for music students, so flash my EPM student card & get in for R$2, about $1.30. I get past the ticket-taker, buy a program and am in the lobby waiting for the doors to open, when a passing waiter offers me a glass of champagne from his tray. I refuse the first time, but say yes to the 2^nd waiter and ask the cost. Well, it’s free. When another waiter collects my empty glass, he asks, “um mais?” (one more?) and so I waft up to my balcony seat a half hour later basking in the glow of 5 or 6 glasses of free champagne. My favorite girl bandolim student from EPM is there w/ 2 boys & we chat a bit. The concert is good, especially the modern piece Paulo is playing in, and he sounds great. I call his cell at the end & we meet out front, where I have run into guitarist-Marcia, and chat for a few minutes. I’m going to Petropolis Sunday & he’ll email me the bus schedule. Home w/ a taxi driver who looks like the Rio Johnny Rotten.

Saturday I call the hospital & all is well, so I meet R & Mariana for lunch in Ipanema, stopping on the way in Copacabana to buy Is&D a duffle bag for all their extra stuff. It’s nice just to hang out w/ R&M with no CD-related activities. They are excited about their September trip to Munich & Paris— the Munich part work-related for Romulo, and the Paris part to visit a friend, and we talk about that and the new roda that R is planning to start on Sunday afternoons in Catete park, with basically Agua and a few other friends. R has his car so they drop me back at my place. I’ve decided I will go to the Elizeth Cardosa musical tonight, after postponing my planned trip there on Thursday, so change and head out to the hospital to find Dagmar much improved. TP meets me there & drops me at the theater for the show, that includes my friend Marcilio on bandolim in the band. The music is so great! It’s a show about the life of one of the greatest Brazilian singers, featuring 5 women & 2 men who all sing her songs as they enact scenes from her life. The theater is in a scary corner of centro, but the audience is full of dapper couples & little old ladies, so that reassures me, and I catch a cab right out front, rather than walk to the metro, and arrive home without mishap.

Sunday I’m up early to catch the bus to Petropolis. Henrique picks me up & I have coffee w/ him & Patricia at their house and we chat. We stop at a restaurant near their house for lunch, and then drop Patricia at the lab & continue on to the Imperial Museum where the Rio Trio is playing today. Paulo is there and Marcus Ferrer, who is playing the delightful violao caipira with the group today instead of his usual guitar. It’s the same type of instrument that Messias plays— he of the movie debut earlier in the trip— but in Marcus’ hands the instrument sounds more harp-like, and they are playing an elegant European program for this “300^th Anniversary of the Portuguese Court” series.

They are playing on the “upper deck” of a room transformed into a ship’s interior, and when I climb up w/ them to listen I get a surprise, as Paulo has a brand new bandolim by his maker/friend in Minas for me to try. It’s really good & I play along w/ the boys— improvising at first and then reading in a later set. I wish there was more time or an opportunity to try the instrument for a couple of days, because this could be “the one”. But, alas, I won’t see Paulo again this trip so would have to decide to buy this right now, and that can’t be done. So I regretfully return it to him when the gig is through.

Paulo’s wife, also Patricia, has brought their children down from Itaipaiva to see me. Mariana is 13 and has passed into a beautiful gracefulness, Miguel is still a feisty boy, and baby Vincenze is walking & talking. We stand for awhile in the lovely sunlight in the museum courtyard and talk. The weather is quite like our spring, this winter in Petropolis, and the flowers are closer to those at home. We’re at a higher altitude than Rio so it’s always a bit cooler here. It’s nice to stand and talk as Miguel pretends to chase Vincenze who looks back over his shoulder and laughs gleefully as he baby-runs.

Eventually we part company, leaving just Henrique, Paulo & me to get some dinner, and then Paulo takes me to catch the bus home. When I arrive @ the Rodaviaria in Rio it’s a crazy scene. It’s the last day of a 2-week school winter vacation and the line for the “approved” taxis is so long I can’t see the end. & the other taxis are absolutely not an option because this is a really bad neighborhood, and the possibility of a set-up robbery or ransom is real. So I call TaxiPaulo who arrives to my rescue in about 10 minutes & takes me home.

Monday I finish a grant application in the morning & go to the hospital to help Is&D pack. D looks so much better. They say good-bye to the many people who have gone so out of their way to make this dire situation as easy as possible, and did it without making it seem like their effort was out of the ordinary. There’s a pic of Is&D w/ Val—the nurse from a samba family who during Carnival works her 12-hour shift, goes dancing for 12 hours, and then is back on the job for the next 12 hours. We all love Brazilians an extra lot today. TP picks us up w/ all the stuff & I run to find a wheelchair when we get to the airport. Their bags are checked & we are waving good-bye in no time, and they make it home in good order. And when I get home I need to pack as well, as tomorrow is my last full day here.

And a very full day it is. In the morning I go to Lapa to officially register my 2 choro & 1 valse for Brazilian copyright. R said I should do this since we have recorded one of them so a lot of people will hear it. I find the right room, filled with men of all ages— no women composers this day— who are registering sambas, rock, forro, and after deciphering the Portuguese I begin the process. It’s very low-tech, involving filling out forms 2 times for each song, making 2-sided copies of the music scores, taking an amount-owed slip to a nearby bank to pay, and returning with proof of payment to get a certificate for each piece w/ its registration number. Of course it takes longer than expected  & TP finds me there still waiting when he comes to pick me up for my last lesson w/ Joel.

At Joel’s I return all the pieces he has lent me to copy, play a lot, and get some last corrections and words of advice. I also play the Agua CD for him, although I’m pretty sure he won’t like it. His comments are “muito barrulo” (too much noise) which is part of the delight of AnF, but must be hard to decipher w/ a hearing aid, and “not enough of you.” But as it isn’t a solo CD or even a feature CD I just take that as a compliment. And he does like the calmest piece on the CD, the valse that Mariana & I play on flute & mandolin. TP drops me at home for a quick change of gear, and while I’m there I get a travel advisory from Orbitz that there will be a Brazilian national airport workers’ strike starting @ midnight. Oh, great— I’m flying out of 2 of them— here and in Sao Paulo!

But for now I’m off to my last Tuesday roda. And I’ve invited Andreas, a post-student from Berlin & Miriam’s latest tenant, to come. He’s doing an internship in a German school as a math teacher and will be in Rio for a few months, so I want him to meet R&M, and he wants to hear choro too. And I figure being from Berlin and about the same age, he’ll probably meet Nate one day. The roda is fun, although it’s hard to leave, and afterwards Andreas, on his bike, actually beats us home in R’s car. I say good-bye to Mariana last of all, and she gives me a big hug and her radiant smile and says, “I’m so glad I know someone like you.” I’ve been thinking that all day as I have been saying good-bye to my friends here one by one.

Wednesday morning I finish packing, eat lunch, TP drops by to say good-bye with a CD of music for me & I give him one of pictures and recordings he wants. R picks me up a bit early because of the airport strike, but, other than waiting a half hour for them to open the check-in counter at Continental, my flights are problem-free, and so I arrive home. When I will return to Rio is, this time, up for speculation. My Brazilian friends insist there is no way I’ll hold out until January, but I can’t see any other option. So here I sit in Maine, shepherding the Agua CD through the manufacturing process by email, and teaching gringo mandolinst about choro. Having two lives is great, but, unfortunately, it means missing part of each one. And while I was in Rio having these adventures I have missed all of you! & I hope to see you soon. In the meantime, enjoy the pics, and write me!!

xo
m